Becoming Sherlock Holmes
by Regency
Summary: AU. John Watson has spent the last three years living as Sherlock Holmes, it's unsurprising he's forgotten how to be himself anymore. Incomplete.
1. Chapter 1

Author: Regency

Title: Becoming Sherlock Holmes

Fandom: Sherlock (BBC)

Spoilers: for series one and some passing references to season two.

Summary: John Watson has spent the last three years living as Sherlock Holmes, it's unsurprising he's forgotten how to be himself anymore.

Author's Notes: The first fic I ever started in the fandom and I don't even remember what inspired it. It also lives in a canon all its own. Basically, Sherlock and John lived together for some indeterminate amount of time before being forced apart for three years. Now, they're back together and learning how to deal. It's sort of a writing exercise more than anything, but there's some kind of plot in there somewhere.

Disclaimer: I don't own any characters recognizable as being from _Sherlock._ They are the property of their actors, producers, writers, and studios, not me. No copyright infringement was intended and no money was made in the writing or distribution of this story. It was good, clean fun.

* * *

It's perhaps their second case together since his return and it's…odd to say the least. He hardly feels at home in his skin, much less this city, but Sherlock, in a moment of bright sentiment, wanted to show the criminal world that his blogger had returned, so John has come along. _Genius needs an audience_ and all that, though John's hardly complaining at ten in the evening, draped in his jumper and tolerance. He's been the happy audience in the past, he can certainly play the role again.

_I've gotten pretty good at it anyway, this role-playing bit._

The hat he'd taken to wearing was lost in his other life and he feels naked without it. He feels smaller in the clothes of the man he used to be. They're the absent threads of an unobservant human being. It's one more indication of the smallness of John Watson's mind; he filled it with minutiae and detritus that couldn't solve a case, and only infrequently save a life. It's only fitting, then, that most of him is gone, locked away in a place where he can bask in his smallness, his normalcy undisturbed.

Ask anyone, ask Sherlock. _Normalcy is boring._

They arrive on the scene with no more than typical fanfare: Sherlock is insulting. Lestrade is tolerant. Donovan is watchful. She doesn't call him a derogatory name to his face, but he reads the word in her pursed lips. She can't abide by what's become of him. It strikes him as disappointing that she'd have him settle for being so much less. Their once-fledgling friendship is dead on arrival and it's entirely mutual.

Sherlock sets to his task with gusto, derailing the police's assumptions without so much as a by-your-leave and erecting his own insurmountable facts in their place. These are the events as they occurred, they are not conjecture; or so the man will say if asked. John is once again filled with awe and envy. A few years of being Sherlock Holmes has accustomed him to the Herculean task of deduction, seeing it come so easily is galling and comforting: a balance restored. John Watson was never meant to be the prodigy; being forgotten is almost a relief.

"John, what do you think?"

The former ersatz consulting detective flicks his eyes towards his flatmate because naturally he's misheard. "What?"

"What do you think? About the case? You've surely developed a number of your own theories by now."

John straightens up from where he's been unconsciously kneeling to better see to a blood stain that found its way beneath Anderson's shoe. His fingertips are still pressed against the evidence marker he requested from the forensic technician. The whole routine is so routine he failed to realize he'd stepped away from the door at all.

"Thrill seeker, bow and arrow, through the open window. Two perpetrators." He hasn't closely examined the body yet, but he doesn't doubt the evidence will bear itself out. This is what he does to differentiate himself from the real Sherlock Holmes; he works his way from crime to the evidence. If the destination and the journey don't agree, there's either been an error in reasoning or an oversight in the facts.

"The window's painted shut," Lestrade notes in what he likely believes is a helpful fashion. Sherlock says nothing, watching.

John rises, moving purposefully toward the window in question. The flat is well-appointed, if small, but affords no particularly impressive view. There's perhaps twenty meters between this building and the next. The glass is intact as expected. Reaching into a concealed pocket, John flips open his Swiss Army Knife and takes the window frame's paint job to task. One steady stroke at the edges merits his truth. He holds the soiled blade up for the Yarders to see.

"Fresh paint, just dried on the surface but tacky underneath. It would probably melt if you exposed it to enough direct heat. They didn't even clear away the debris from mucking up the original paint job." _Sloppy_, he thinks.

John can feel the weight of Donovan's stare on his shoulders. It's lighter than the world he used to carry, so he's happy enough to leave her to it. Lestrade moves directly beside him to get a good look at what he means. He engages his brain for a change. _Maybe the hiatus was good for everyone._

"You could smell the paint."

"Yup," he answers with a customary twitch of the lips. That and the victim had his back to the window when he was struck down. The arrow struck solidly between the L-2 and L-3 lumbar vertebrae at high velocity, most likely severing the spinal cord, leaving the man with neither musculoskeletal control nor feeling below the waist as a direct result. He wouldn't have been fit to sit upright much less put up a fight.

John has to admit he's a bit proud of this conclusion. _Still got some uses, haven't you, old boy?_ His medical training had all but assured that the learning curve to properly imitating Sherlock Holmes wouldn't be steep enough to drive him to drink. It _had_ been steep, regardless.

Sherlock approaches him swiftly, a worryingly eager look taking up residence in his eyes. "You said there were two perpetrators. Why?"

John suddenly realizes that he's the mystery now. Sherlock's worked out the facts of the case, but he wants to peel back the layers of John's new intellect. He wants to crawl inside him and solve him out. Polite as you please, John opens the door to let him in.

"Someone had to paint the window closed afterward, someone who was covering tracks for the archer. An arrow to the back is more than slightly damaging but not immediately fatal. Someone made it easy to kill this man without doing the killing themselves. "

"The torturer has a minder." Sherlock's eyebrows draw together as he turns to view the body again, pale eyes flickering from the shattered head of the still body to the fluttering fletching of the arrow. _Inexpensive, yet well-engineered. Lacks any identifying marks, but the shaft appears to be constructed of lightweight aluminium alloy._ John isn't sure which of them thinks it.

"Probably a flunkie, underpaid but loyal."

"Likely terrified, possibly a victim of blackmail."

"Probably." Their eyes meet and John can feel their minds syncing, a disquieting click signalling the return of their camaraderie. He's missed it. "Moriarty." It isn't a question and that leaves him slightly furious.

"Why this man," the consulting detective asks him, indicating the well-dressed corpse that is their victim. An everyday genius, John thinks but doesn't say. Rounded shoulders, pronounced limp; it's a window to his former self. He makes an effort not to think what the gunshot to the temple reflects.

For want of anything to confess, he shrugs. "I can't tell you why him, but I can say why this injury."

Sherlock manages to look positively intrigued, a feat for a man who lives a half-life of boredom most days.

"You've seen his legs, he's got a prosthetic. Wouldn't have left him bedridden, but it would have greatly impaired his mobility, given the nature of the injury. Probably extremely painful, since it's a relatively recent injury. I can only guess at the psychological implications, but with Moriarty involved, I'd say he was a man of above average intellect being courted for his organization."

"And he refused." Another non-question.

"For what Moriarity decided was an unsatisfying reason."

"Thus, he shot him in the spine, leaving him paralyzed."

"To add one final insult to the injury." _Now, you're as useless as you feel_, Moriarty would have quipped. It's the sort of human poetry Moriarty would not consider himself above.

"Nobody rejects Jim Moriarty."

"And lives? No."

"Interesting," Sherlock says in the same way someone might say, _Fruitcake? I'd love some._ It's clearly insincere. Jim Moriarty stopped being fun years ago. "It looks like you've got your answer, Lestrade. I do hope we've simplified the matter enough for you."

The detective inspector doesn't manage more than a half-hearted glare before waving them toward the exit. Anything Moriarty touches is destined for the cold case archives. While John is happy to go, there's just one more thing.

"The can of paint's in the closet. It'll have been bought with the victim's credit card online post-mortem, so it won't be much use to you. It's a dead-end, but you may as well have it."

Lestrade orders Anderson and Donovan to handle the collection with a tip of the head. "Thanks, John."

"Cheers."

His flatmate's lips are quirked in a smile as they walk away. John pretends not to notice.

They step silently out into the midnight air, falling easily into step with each other as they head back toward Baker Street. John can feel the John Watson he was before unfurling in his head. He doesn't have to be the clever clogs in this city, certainly not in their flat. He can just be John again, the slightly more than ordinary ex-army doctor. It's a startlingly depressing revelation.

"You couldn't be ordinary if you tried," Sherlock tosses omnisciently back to him while waving down a taxi. "And I've seen you try." He catches one on his first effort and John follows him into the spacious interior as in the days of old.

"It is a bit pathetic, isn't it?"

"Terribly."

They share a clever smile that's hidden by the dark.

"So, tell me, how did you go about 'becoming Sherlock Holmes'?" His interest exceeds levels that anyone would consider safe for their continued health and sanity. Lucky for John, he's been mad as a hatter and fit as a fox since Afghanistan; he can take whatever his flatmate can dish.

"It was like being in uni again, or medical school. I read everything from the weather to the want ads—daily. I deleted all the nonsense about people who weren't important and who I'd never see again. I scaled back on the niceties. They were distracting." _You don't have to be nice if you're effective._ John had discovered that quickly. Nice people get handshakes, not job offers.

"I've always told you that."

John glares at the taller man balefully. "There's such a thing as flat-out rude, and there's a time and place for that, but it isn't everyday and under every circumstance. Even superficial politeness goes a long way toward getting people to do what you ask."

"It's manipulation."

"You're one to talk. I may have been gone for three years, but I haven't suddenly come down with amnesia. I remember you."

Sherlock gives an indignant sniff. "I don't deny that. I simply mean to say that it's very…_Mycroft_ of you to use societal expectations against other members of society."

It was John's turn to sniff. "Whatever works."

"My brother will be _so_ proud."

"Oh, piss off."

"And here I thought your vocabulary had grown beyond petty, childish curses."

"Just as soon as you grow beyond petty, childish everything."

They sneer at each other. There's something to be said for too much too soon. John did the only thing he could possibly do to survive as Sherlock Holmes. He used his gift for understanding human motives as well as his experience in the army to compensate for what he lacked in ready forensic trivia. That alone only got him so far before he was forced to attack _Science_ and _Nature_ with more gusto than he had in years, in addition to any other relevant journals he could find. Mycroft had been a godsend in his willingness to have Anthea—Cassiopeia, Calliope, Desdemona, Esmeralda, or Nymphadora during a particularly coy week—fetch him any research material he might need. He made a busy woman of her.

Comprehension was easy, John's always been a quick study; it was retention that continually thwarted him. He's understood from the very beginning that Sherlock's, and even Mycroft's, mind works differently from his own: There's more space, perhaps more order; there's all-around more. He knew he couldn't hope to compete. So, John consulted the master—Sherlock will kill him if he ever finds out how John sees his brother now—and learned to forget.

* * *

Sherlock is giving him that look again.

John is updating his blog for the fifth time since returning home two months ago. His posts lately have alternated between recollections of their recent joint work and the work he did abroad. It's good stuff, if written a little differently than his readers are accustomed to. Sherlock's already applauded the slow death of his sentimental side. John laments it but knows there's nothing for it. That part of him will either return in time or not at all; he's made peace with either outcome.

He's also made peace with his friend's keen interest. Sherlock wants to play, constantly. He slides old case files at John when he is tired, when he is bored, when he is otherwise occupied and asks him to solve them. Sometimes he can't, sometimes he can, and sometimes he just gets stuck on the cusp without ever falling. His is not a young mind, he's taught it what it can be taught as well as it can be taught. Sherlock disagrees.

"John, I'd like to conduct an experiment—if you agree."

The ex-army doctor, and he tries to think of himself as that more often than anything else and it helps, finishes proofing his latest post and submits it to the blog queue. It should show up in the next hour. He expects it to cause a fuss; that's the part he likes.

"What sort of experiment?"

"Nothing too extreme."

"I don't know what that means." With Sherlock, it's likely related to unavoidable mortal peril. John already has plans to retrieve his gun.

"Just a friendly competition."

"What sort of competition?"

"Of deduction. I want to see what you've taught yourself in your time away." His glance is assessing, calculating. John thinks he'd make a fine evil genius had Moriarty not already filled the niche.

"You know what I've taught myself, you've read the case files."

"Indeed, but I'm also aware that you tend to greatly understate your abilities to satisfy some perceived societal bent toward modesty."

John sighs and reaches up to ruffle his hair. "No one likes a know-it-all, Sherlock."

"Why does it matter?"

"What?"

"Whether anyone likes you. You're smarter than them by leagues. Why do their feelings count?"

"Because, without clientele there is no work. We live to satisfy the Work and if there is none, what have we got? What are we?"

Sherlock purses his lips, and then nods. "Bored."

"Exactly." John knows that he talks like Sherlock, now, and it only bothers him when he breathes.

"You hate it, too, now? Being bored?" A glimmer of understanding creeps into his expression.

"It drives me mad," he smiles painfully. He can feel all the parts of himself he discarded to make room for Sherlock Holmes when he's bored. Everything he deleted yawns to be restored. That's something he can't allow. The madness of monotony in his own mind would overpower anything that boredom can mete out.

"Then, let's play a game."

"What sort of game?"

Sherlock grins, delighted it seems to have a near-equal he can trust. "A great one."

Sherlock hands him a set of handcuffs, origins unknown, and tells him to find the owner.

"Limitations?"

"For starters, within London proper."

It's a gift. John doesn't quite feel up to tramping across the whole of Britain on a lark, even if it keeps the boredom at bay. His hand and leg hardly bother him at all now; his rushes are intellectual and physical at once.

He slips out of 221B Baker Street at seven in the evening with plans to work all night. He's grown used to insomnia, he has caffeine pills that sharpen his mind when desperate measures call for it. Keeping Sherlock amused most certainly qualifies.

He doesn't return for days.


	2. Chapter 2

The cuffs belong to a cunning dominatrix by the name of Irene Adler, whom John finds with a lovely lady royal who shall go unnamed. They're both rather glad to see the set again as they'd been engraved. When all is said and done, The Woman sends Sherlock her regards by way of a bright red kiss on the cheek. John gamely agrees to pass it on.

With no direct access to Sherlock, the elder Holmes brother had been John's sole source of information on the goings-on at home. Unsurprisingly, he'd left things out.

As he descends into exhausted sleep, John makes a mental note to ask what else he's missed. He'd hate to be blindsided by a happy announcement.

He wakes up at three in the morning to pointed fingers outlining the shape of Irene's lips on his face.

"Extraordinary," Sherlock says. _Curious_, John hears.

Sherlock says "extraordinary" the way others say, "want, take, have." They have the same possessive meaning in the end. Sherlock is possessive of that which interests him, and equally destructive of it. John knows he's going to be devoured by that fascination. He'll be gutted by it, dissected and disassembled to dysfunction. Sherlock Holmes has no qualms about breaking the things which fascinate him; that's the way he learns.

…

"What do you think about this," Sherlock asks upon returning from a scene without him. John had been at the surgery, pretending quite well to be the old John for a few hours. It supplements the money he makes solving the tiny mysteries with which Sherlock doesn't bother. _People are so easy to read._ He feels a bit guilty charging for the service at all because of that fact.

"Think about what?"

The file comes careening toward him on air, paper threatening to fly from the orderly protection the brown folder affords. He growls his displeasure, leaping up to catch it before it becomes a mess he's responsible for.

"That."

"You could have just handed it to me."

Rolling his eyes, his flatmate frees himself of his coat only to sprawl disdainfully on the sofa. "Irrelevant. Tell me what you make of the case."

"You could just tell me your conclusions."

"That would prejudice your findings. Read and then we'll talk." Sherlock throws an arm across his face, signalling the end of this leg of the conversation. Refusing to pander to the ubiquitous sigh on his tongue, John does what he always does: as he's told.

At first glance, the case is new though not uniquely fascinating. A woman was found in her apartment with her bullet in her brain, her face marred by gross effect of a Glaswegian smile. That's the first layer. The next one tells John that the apartment was locked and that the victim had only recently recovered, as much as one can, from undergoing a laryngectomy to combat metastasizing throat cancer. The third layer involves a hunch of Lestrade's, which led them to discover a picked lock in the closet, the exact same model as the untouched one on the apartment door, supposedly purchased by the victim. The fourth and final layer: the woman was a renowned cryptanalyst for the British Government. _Someone Moriarty would have wanted, who would have had the good sense to refuse._

"Call Mycroft."

Sherlock swears. "I was hoping you wouldn't say that."

"This is right up his alley. She was clearly one of his people."

"He may not admit anything."

"He doesn't have to. The truth will out in all he doesn't say."

Sherlock flips onto his side to send John another quizzical glance. His eyes begin to slide over John the way an MRI imager slides across the human body. "You understand human emotions better than either of us, while also managing to grasp some of the less obvious facets of deduction." His pale mouth stretches wide in an impressed grin. "Welcome to the family."

John isn't sure he should say 'thank you' to that particular invitation. "Call Mycroft."

"I don't have my phone." He extends his hand expectantly. It's John's turn to swear as he rolls to his feet to hand the younger man his. This whole affair feels engineered.

…

Sherlock puts paid to any preliminaries, stating up front, "One of yours is dead."

Mycroft, in John's chair, sporting his ever-present umbrella—the genesis of John's new walking stick—merely raises an eyebrow at Sherlock's typically tactless declaration. "Are you sure they're one of mine? I occupy a relatively minor position—"

His brother scoffs, "Don't insult us, Mycroft. There are no fools here."

The elder Holmes swings his placid eyes to where John is sitting on the armrest of the sofa. "It seems you've convinced him, then. Congratulations." John thinks _fruitcake_ on a number of levels, though he's rather fond of this one.

"Thank you."

Mycroft raises his umbrella in acknowledgement. "You didn't call me here simply to tell me that someone you believe to be in my employ has been killed. What exactly do you require of me?"

"Moriarty," Sherlock intones, stretched lazily on the couch. He didn't see fit to dress himself again for his brother's visit, so he lies in his sleep pants and dressing gown like the bored, overgrown child he is. Or so John thinks.

"I assure you, I don't _have_ Moriarty."

"No, but you _can_ find him, even if you can't reach him."

John decides to step in before the two devolve into one of their usual brotherly spats. "He's maiming and killing vulnerable members of the intelligence community who refuse to accept invitations to join his organization. That we know so far, he's taken out one who had lost his leg and another who had effectively lost her voice. We have reason to believe he's more unstable than he has been in the past. He has a minder now, someone visible and present at the scene that is responsible for ensuring that he isn't immediately tied to the crime."

"How can you tell?"

Sherlock snaps, "Because the minder's a bloody idiot! He couldn't discreetly perpetrate a crime with a handbook, assuming he can read to begin with."

John rolls his eyes. He can't say he missed this part of being John Watson: being the voice of reason. "If our guess"—Sherlock hisses—"is right, Moriarty does the damage and his henchman finishes the job."

"Badly," Sherlock has to add.

"He left the methods for cover-up at the crime scenes."

Mycroft narrows his eyes in a Holmesian expression of concentration. John prepares to take mental notes. Though John knows that his best friend is nearly equal to Mycroft in deductive ability, he can't help looking to the elder Holmes as the master to his pupil. _Maybe it's the umbrella?_ John has yet to figure that bit out.

"He's clearly unconcerned with the threat of apprehension by the authorities. The question is whether that carelessness is a result of confidence in Moriarty's position or confidence in his own."

"A low-ranking associate wouldn't have survived that kind of mistake."

"Whereas a right-hand might. Begs the question: who is Moriarty's right hand?"

"That question I _can_ answer for you." Mycroft produces a leaf-brown folder and hands it to John who immediately flips it open to assess its contents. Photos, candid shots taken with a sharp focus lens from a moderate distance. There are a number of faces obscured, but one has been carefully sharpened for easy identification.

"Do we have a name?"

"Sebastian Moran, formerly of the Royal Marines, dishonourably discharged at the rank of colonel five years ago in connection with a number of violent crimes."

"Did he do time?"

"Very little."

"Is he someone we should worry about," John asks, knowing that Sherlock won't care to one way or another.

"If this 'game,'" Mycroft sneers with all due derision, "continues, then you should be very worried. One doesn't become the closest known associate of a man like Moriarty without a gift for ruthless cunning."

"And becoming the British Government was a bloodless walk in Regent's Park? Really, Mycroft, try not to be blatantly hypocritical during _every_ moment of your life."

"Alas, dear brother, you have performed the task so aptly I can hardly think to compete." Mycroft comes to his feet fluidly, clearly ready to depart. He and John shake hands as old friends do, parrying briefly over the paper they hope to publish shortly on subject of, well, classified hardly begins to cover it. Even the intelligence community has its academic elite; his association with Mycroft has easily added John to their number.

Sherlock grouses while they say their goodbyes and they both speak just a bit slower to spite him. All of those months of communicating with Mycroft absent of Sherlock's influence have altered John's perception of the man. He's a meddlesome git to be sure, but he's achingly brilliant and, most shockingly, utterly sincere. Like Sherlock, he harbours latent sociopathic tendencies in accordance with his extraordinary intelligence, though he's never been properly diagnosed. That was a choice made long ago, when he first decided that his life's work lay in civil service. Sociopaths might populate the political arena, but it would never do to have a certificate stating as much.

"Until next time, John."

"Drive safely, Mycroft." The man has more enemies, foreign and domestic, than Sherlock has solved cases. John tries not to think about the three separate occasions on which he's been forced to kill to save the public servant's life. They were about as engineered as any interaction with a Holmes could be.

"Be careful, Sherlock," Mycroft reemphasizes one final time. Naturally, his brother pretends not to hear him.

John watches Mycroft's departure and entry into the sleek black Jaguar from the window. They pull away uneventfully and something in him relaxes.

"He has dozens of bodyguards, John. You needn't worry about him."

"You know me, I worry about everything."

...

On a day so dull it wounds the soul, John hands Sherlock a tie pin of the Norwegian flag with a single thread of bright yellow silk wound about the stem. Sherlock doesn't leave the flat for fifteen minutes, contemplating his quarry. He is gone at the strike of the sixteenth.

John doesn't see Sherlock for days, but he returns sooner than John did, a flower in the third buttonhole of his greatcoat and a kiss for John on each cheek.

"Kirstin sends her regards, as does Oscar."

John sits, smiling in memory of the two and gingerly plucking the petals from the bloom.

"Where didn't you go?" Sherlock asks, because Sherlock always does eventually when he can't deduce the truth.

John rubs the silken petals between his fingertips, the vivid pigment staining them bright. "I couldn't begin to tell you." John had been everywhere as everyone. He had been every man, and a few terribly ugly women, on every continent in every tongue he could conceivably fake. John Watson had been anyone but for years. It was startling, after a fashion, to realize he missed it.

"If you go again, I won't pursue you." John had loved the freedom, it was only natural that Sherlock would notice.

John doesn't look up. He doesn't need to. Sherlock is on tenterhooks they won't name; John can see them glinting in the periphery.

"Of course not, you'll be right next to me."

There are false starts in the silence, breathy interludes amid all that Sherlock nearly says before he says nothing at all. John doesn't complain when Sherlock pilfers one of his petals to examine under the microscope. It isn't native to Norway; he'll know the truth before long.

That John has seen the world, wide and wild, and he still came home. He will always come back to Baker Street.


End file.
